National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy - Construction Industry ...

Summary
The main cause of inadequate maintenance of
national government buildings has been
inadequate budgeting for maintenance. Increasing
the user charges will enable maintenance budgets
to increase, resulting in improvement to the
condition of the buildings.
d. Municipalities
Overview of municipal infrastructure and
service delivery
Municipalities are typically responsible for water
services (including sanitation), roads and
stormwater, solid waste collection and disposal,
and, in many but not all cases, the distribution of
electricity. They are also responsible for an array of
public facilities and amenities, including sports
fields, community halls and libraries. They may
also be responsible for low-income housing.
The CSIR has estimated that the current
replacement cost of all municipal engineering
infrastructure and buildings (excluding housing) is
at least R300 billion. Given the poor state of much
of this, and the repair and refurbishment
consequently required in addition to planned
maintenance, international norms suggest that
approximately 4% of the replacement value should
on average be spent per annum on maintenance
(excluding for disposal and replacement) -
amounting to about R12 billion per annum.
However, municipalities are on average budgeting
for less than half of this.
State of infrastructure and state of maintenance
There are no formal broad-based audits of the
state of municipal infrastructure. Particularly
lacking is any overview of trends in the state and
performance of local government infrastructure
and its maintenance. However research
undertaken by the cidb and CSIR reveals serious
shortfalls (and in places gross shortfalls) in many
municipalities' maintenance policies and practice.
The sustained provision of services is in many
cases under threat. Specifically, many
municipalities are not conforming to the
requirements of the MFMA, Municipal Systems Act
and other legislation that they should ensure that
adequate provision is made for the long-term
maintenance of infrastructure assets.
While many of the aspects of infrastructure
maintenance are implemented to a high standard
in a small number of municipalities, there are great
shortfalls in maintenance policies and practice in
many other municipalities. The sustained
provision of services by a significant proportion of
the municipal infrastructure is under threat.
Generally, the municipalities in or close to the
larger urban centres are coping better, while
municipalities that are mostly rural in nature are
struggling the most - but there are significant
exceptions.
Of concern at municipal level is the state of
wastewater treatment, water treatment, water and
sewer reticulation, on-site sanitation, electricity
reticulation, and arterial roads -- these are the
fundamental building blocks for economic growth
and healthy communities. Of greatest concern is
the state of wastewater treatment.
The two principal causes of the ongoing failure of
many municipalities to recover maintenance
backlogs, run a preventative maintenance
programme and deliver a reliable, sustainable
service are:
• inadequate revenue and budgets (either
because these municipalities are in a distressed
financial state and thus unable to fund
infrastructure maintenance; or, even if they are
not distressed, infrastructure maintenance is
not prioritised in the planning and budgeting
process); and
• inadequate skills (especially technical skills)
and experience to plan and implement
appropriate maintenance programmes.
Unpacking the first of these causes, the following
are the greatest contributors to the inadequacy of
revenue and budgets:
• the increasing amount of infrastructure (new
areas served, improved levels of service, and
upgrading of existing service levels) owned by
national infrastructure maintenance strategy
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